


just close your eyes (the sun is going down)

by BlackBlood1872



Series: a shining light to guide you home [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Jack is essentially a grim reaper, Light Angst, Post-Canon, making up lore for my own purposes, sort of? It's a very melancholy tone bc that's all I can write apparently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22311124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBlood1872/pseuds/BlackBlood1872
Summary: Before Jack is a Guardian, he is a Winter spirit. He encourages the weather to change at the end of autumn and spreads frost and snow days and as much merriment as he can.He is also a Shepherd, and that job doesn’t stop just because he’s become a Guardian of Childhood.The other Guardians discover this, and it’s not as terrible as Jack expected it to be.
Series: a shining light to guide you home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606189
Comments: 10
Kudos: 441





	just close your eyes (the sun is going down)

**Author's Note:**

> The bigger fic that's in the same universe of the Pitch POV fic I posted before this. This one actually explains the whole Shepherd thing lol  
> Title shamelessly stolen from Taylor Swift's [Safe and Sound](https://youtu.be/RzhAS_GnJIc)

It’s late August and Jack is at the workshop. He has free reign here, now, and he’s making use of it to fly around and annoy the elves and yeti, with minor detours to annoy the big man himself. It’s fun, and it keeps him busy in his off season, before winter truly starts and he needs to be everywhere to get it and keep it rolling.

It’s late August and winter is only starting to touch the northern parts of the world. Jack thinks he still has time before his work begins.

He’s wrong.

He’s just passing by the globe when he feels a familiar tug in his chest and his flight falters and stops. He slumps to the floor, aching in the mild way this _always_ makes him ache.

On the globe, a light goes out.

“Jack, what is wrong?” North asks, and Jack hadn’t noticed him arrive, barely has the energy to lift his gaze away from the missing light and glance the man’s way. The first one of the season always hits the hardest.

Jack pulls himself back up, leaning heavily on his hook for a moment as he catches his breath, and then drifts to the globe. He can’t reach it from the balcony railing, but he mimes tracing the lights, and lingers on the glaring new point of darkness. “Can you tell the difference?” he asks, voice quiet and tired, curiosity lurking underneath, dampened. His hand returns to his staff and he holds it close. “Between loss of belief and loss of…” he attempts to clarify, and hopes North can hear the word he can’t say.

North joins him at the railing. “Yes,” he confirms quietly. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack sees the man look at him curiously. “How can you tell? You did not have believers until recent.”

“I’m a Winter spirit,” Jack reminds him. “A Shepherd. I’ve always known this.”

North looks at him directly at that, seeming to see him for the first time, and the whole cast of him is sad. Not pity, and not quite sympathy, but understanding and a wish that things could be different.

“I see. You must be going, then.” It’s not a question.

Jack nods. It’s already been longer than he usually dallies, and the child must be confused. Scared. He can’t leave them for much longer.

North turns his gaze back to the globe and its missing light as Jack calls the wind and lets it carry him away.

* * *

When Jack woke up, it was to a full moon and the wind gently lifting him out of the water. It was cold, and dark, and he was scared. And then a voice that sounded how moonlight felt said, _“Your name is Jack Frost and you are a Shepherd.”_

And that had been it. The first and last words the Moon spoke to him, giving him a name and a job to do.

He hadn’t immediately known what being a Shepherd meant. To be honest, he forgot about it in the wake of discovering what he could do with his frost, how he could make it snow and bring a spark of joy to a child’s day, if he played his cards right.

And then the winter turned colder than he expected and people started dying. Adults, lost while hunting or gathering, or just stuck in places without enough heat. Without enough food. Children, who got colder so much faster than adults did. Who were expendable, when there were only so many supplies that could only be spread so thinly.

The first child to die had rung an alarm so shrill in his mind that he'd fallen to his knees in pain and choked on a scream, for all that there was still no one to hear him. With that alarm came knowledge, where and who and why, and what to do now.

 _Herd them on_ , he realized. _Lead them to the next place._

Jack didn’t know where that was, never experienced it for himself, but he knew it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know where the souls where going. He only needed to get them started on the path. Collect and guide.

And so he did so. He found the spirit of the child, insubstantial form quivering in the cold, dark night, standing in the doorway of a hut full of mourning. She looked at him when he landed lightly in front of her, and she was the first to ever do so, but the wonder of that was pale compared to the reason why.

Jack crouched in front of her and tried to smile as warmly as he could. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get you home.”

* * *

“Frostbite? What’re ya _doing_?”

Jack spins around, the soul on the end of his shepherds hook giggling as they swing through the air behind him, and finds himself face to chest with Bunny. He darts his gaze up to meet the other Guardian's eyes, and swallows hard at the confused horror within them.

“You’ve never seen a Shepherd working before?” Jack asks weakly. Recognition blooms in Bunny’s eyes, followed by a quickly buried unease. Jacks lips settle into a flat line.

“I’ve seen Mary about,” Bunny says, naming the Spring spirit that Jack has only met in passing. “I didn’t know _you_ were…”

“I haven’t just been causing mischief in the snow for the last three hundred years,” Jack bites out, and quickly refocuses on his job. The soul, a lime sized ball of white light, swirls around the crook of his staff, and it only takes a three quarter twist to send it into the air where it dissolves into diamond dust. Bunny’s eyes track the movement, then drift back down to stare at Jack. Jack shuffles uncomfortably and holds his staff closer.

“How long have ya been a Shepherd?” Bunny asks at last, gaze perturbed yet unwavering. Jack likes that about him, even if it doesn’t make him feel all that great right now.

“Three hundred years, give or take,” he says with a shrug, the movement forced and sharp, defensive rather than dismissive. “Since I woke up like this. It’s the only other thing Manny told me.”

It’s an automatic defense, to shift the blame for this dreadful profession from him to someone the Guardians can’t argue against. To nip any attempts to get him to stop in the bud, before any plans can even be thought about. Not that North had seemed likely to do that, when he found out about this weeks ago. And Bunny obviously knows another spirit who does this, and doesn’t seem bothered by her. Just uncomfortable. Which, Jack can understand that, can sympathize with a Protector of Childhood being upset about the death of children.

But this is his job, is part of being a Winter spirit. Someone has to do it, no matter how unpleasant the work.

Bunny bows his head and breathes deeply, shoulders slumping down. “Right. O'course. It just surprised me, is all.”

“You didn’t know,” Jack says, shrugs again. He's never mentioned it, so how would he know? How could any of the Guardians have known?

A tug on his soul, a ring in his ear like the shatter of ice, and Jack turns away to stare off into the distance. He isn’t seeing the trees in front of him, though, and when Bunny sees those glazed eyes, he shuffles away. Jack blinks, refocuses. “I have to go,” he says, the wind already lifting him up. He doesn’t wait for a response.

Bunny watches silently as he soars away, heart heavy.

* * *

There are different levels of Shepherds, Jack comes to find. There are those like him, tasked with collecting the souls of children who die in the winter. Or the spring, summer, autumn, though those are picked up by their respective seasonal spirit. Then there are spirits who collect teenagers, others who handle adults. There are different spirits who do the same jobs on other continents.

Jack knows this, but he rarely ever meets the others in his profession. There isn’t a lot of overlap, really.

He knows the other Winter Shepherds, those who pick up any souls older than twelve. Elizabeth, who goes by Lizzy and collects anyone who dies between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five; Joseph, who shepherds everyone older than that. He’s met them on the job, in places where an entire family met their end, and Joseph and Lizzy handled any adults or teenagers he couldn’t. Jack has tried, in the past, but those souls just slip through his fingers like every other person who doesn’t believe in him.

He knows Mary, the Spring spirit who collects for his age group, though mostly in passing. There is some overlap between winter and spring, and some days of that in-between stage belong to him, others to her. Rarely do they interact.

She’s always nice, the few times they do bump into each other. Jack might even go so far as to call her a friend. A work friend. But still a friend.

* * *

Sandy has borne witness to many of Jack's bounties, over the centuries. Winter nights are long and cold, and plenty unfortunate souls pass away during them. The Sandman never says anything about it, not just because he’s incapable of speech, but because nothing he could say would change the facts.

He can only do his part to give those on Death’s doorstep the mercy of one last peaceful sleep, before the end. Sweet dreams, to take with them on their journey.

* * *

It’s not so bad, really, this job. The more years pass, the less children die during his season, during others. Times are better than they were in the eighteenth, nineteenth centuries, and child mortality rates are the lowest he’s ever known.

Children do still die, but not anywhere close to the frequency he knew when he first started out. Weeks, months, can pass between tugs, and Jack is free to spend that time doing what he loves most—spreading frost and fun to every kid he can, whether or not they can see him.

More and more can, nowadays, ever since he became a Guardian and gained his first believers. Word has spread about him, stories Jamie and his friends tell, which are told again and again, rumours that ripple out from Burgess to touch nearby communities and further. Jack feels brighter and fuller than he ever had before, and his Joy spills out of him like light, lingering everywhere his believers are.

The problem with belief, however, is being seen even when he’d rather not be. Like here, now, by a boy who’s far too young to be thinking about death.

“Jack?” the boy, the Last Light, his first believer, says in surprise when Jack flies into the hospital playroom. Jack pulls up short and blinks rapidly.

“Jamie? What are you doing here?”

“Visiting my friend Katy,” he says, gesturing off in the direction the girl went, off in search of her other friends. They were going to meet up and play this afternoon, but the others are running late. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Oh, you know. Work. And some fun,” Jack says with a wink and spins a small flurry into existence above Jamie’s head. The boy laughs, startled and delighted, and tilts his head back to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

“I didn’t know you did actual _work_ ,” Jamie teases once the flurry fades away.

Jack rolls his eyes. “Ha ha, so funny.” He drops down to sit cross-legged in a corner, hopefully away from where any of the promised other kids are going to sit. He radiates cold, and even he knows that’s not a good thing to expose sick kids to. “I’m a Winter spirit, of course I have jobs to do.”

Jamie tilts his head and looks at him. He's twelve now, only a few months away from being outside of Jack's collection group, and he’s really starting to think about and question everything he can. It’s usually around this age that kids stop believing in the Guardians, and Jack tries not to think about that fact too much. One day, Jamie won’t be able to see him anymore. One day, he'll lose his first believer. But that hasn’t happened yet, and so Jack pushes that melancholy as far away as he can.

“What _do_ you do outside of snow day stuff?” Jamie asks. Jack knew it was coming but still hadn't prepared himself well enough and winces. Jamie's eyes light up in that disturbing way kids do when they spot weakness and Jack knows he isn’t getting out of this.

He’d hoped Jamie would be older than this when he told him. If Jack ever told him.

“Jamie… you know the kids here are sick, right?” Jamie's eyes dull, just a little bit, at the reminder. He nods. “The doctors are trying to help them get better, and sometimes it works and that kid can go home again. But sometimes… nothing can fix what’s wrong, and those are the kids I have to… take away. Or some other Shepherd does, if it’s not winter.”

Understanding sparks in Jamie’s eyes, just before hurt and denial smothers it. “But—you’re the Guardian of Fun!”

“I am,” Jack sighs, curling around his staff and dropping his gaze to his bare toes. He flexes them, watching the permafrost on his skin crackle and shed, melting before it hits the floor. “But I’m a Winter spirit too, and winter isn’t nice.”

“You’re always nice.”

“I try to be. But sometimes there’s nothing I can do.”

Silence falls over the playroom, a sad sort of quiet, broken only by their soft breathing. Jack watches through his bangs as Jamie fidgets with some of the toys nearby, face shifting with his thoughts as he tries to settle this new information into his worldview. Finally, he sighs, heavier than a boy his age should, and looks back up.

“Who are you here for?” he asks, nearly inaudible.

“A boy named Brandon,” Jack says, and can’t help the burst of relief in his chest when Jamie doesn’t show any sign of recognition.

“And he’s…” Jamie breaks off, works his jaw as he tries to find the right words. “He's going to be okay? Where he’s going?”

“He is,” Jack confirms, because although he's never been to wherever these souls go, after, he has hope that it’s a more peaceful place. Better than being an Earth-bound ghost, tied down by rage or regret.

He’s encountered those, too, over the years. He'd never wish that sort of existence on the kids he ferries onward.

Jamie nods decisively. “Then I’m glad this is your job. I know you’ll do all you can to make them happy.”

“And I’ll make you guys happy, too, you know. Even though it’ll only be snow days for you.” Jamie manages a smile at that, and Jack resolves to drop in on the kid as often as he can this winter. He feels guilty enough having dropped this revelation on him, and if he can help to soften the blow, lessen the strain, then he will. Jamie may not be much of a child any longer, but almost-thirteen is still too young to have such a mature subject as death hovering over him.

Everyone has to grow up eventually. Jack’s just going to make sure it doesn’t happen quite so soon.

* * *

Not all of the memory boxes are full.

Toothiana knows this and accepts it, but that doesn’t stop her from mourning it. If she had her way—if _any_ of the Guardians had their way—every child would grow up loved and protected and happy, and live to great old ages before they finally pass away in their sleep. But life doesn’t work like that, isn’t some idolized vision of total peace and happiness. Sometimes lives go wrong.

Sometimes, children die.

Toothiana doesn’t have very many slow days, not when she collects all the lost teeth of all the children in the world, but they happen occasionally. On these quiet days, she takes to flying through her kingdom, making sure everything is set to rights. Boxes in the right shelves, all teeth present and accounted for and in the correct places.

She lingers on the boxes that aren’t full, young children who haven’t lost them all yet, boxes new and gleaming, waiting. Others, older ones, metal gone dull with time, that aren’t full and never will be. Those, she mourns. Not the teeth themselves, the inadequacy of her collection, but the child they came from, who will never have the chance to entrust the rest of those memories into her care.

Jack doesn’t visit her palace often—

“It’s too warm here,” he said when she asked, “too much Summer for a Winter sprite like me.” He'd laughed, waved it off with humour, but she hasn’t pressed since. They're friends, she likes to think, and friends try not to harm each other if they can manage it.

—but short visits don’t seem to hurt him, and so he pops by occasionally, flies through the towers and rooms and distracts her fairies with his blinding smiles and joyful laughter. Sometimes he’s a quiet presence, barely noticed, and she’s surprised to spot him out of the corner of her eye. He lingers, sometimes, in the room of half-filled boxes, trailing light fingers over the images of lost children.

“I remember her,” he said once, when Toothiana joined him. “She had a couple brothers, all younger than her, and she would sneak them portions of her food. They didn’t have much, not enough for such a large family, and she knew that. She asked if I could watch them, after. Make sure her sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”

“Was it?” Toothiana asked, and wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer.

“They all lived,” Jack said. His smile was brittle and slanted, at odds with the sadness in his eyes. “I tried to give them better winter memories in the following years but… they missed her. They never forgot her.”

Toothiana rested a hand on his shoulder, squeezed when he leaned into the touch. He'd left soon after that, citing the heat, but she’d seen the new frost on his eyelashes. She hadn’t mentioned it, and his parting smile was grateful.

Some memories are too painful to linger on, she knows. But that doesn't mean they’ll hurt forever.


End file.
